Good Jobs Will Come from a Cleaner Economy

By Ben Jealous

The Black Press is Our Vanguard...continued purpose. one defined by working people making and using things they can be proud of again from electric school buses to solar panels.

You’d think that opportunity would be welcomed by all. But the self-interested like Big Oil and Gas companies that are grabbing billions in historic profits and the politicians they support are doing all they can to roll back the commitments made since 2021. They even tied up the recent debate over a U.S. default on its loans to advance their opposition.

That’s an odd political play. A CBS News poll last month found more than half of Americans want the climate crisis addressed right now and more than twothirds want it tackled within a few years.

Ben Jealous

I traveled recently from Baltimore, the city where my mother grew up, to Portland, Maine, where my dad did. It’s easy for many to see differences between one of the Blackest cities in America and largest city in one of the whitest states in the country.

What always hits me is what unites the two places is the suffering they’ve felt as a consequence of the decline of American industry in the 50 years of my life. My father’s family once operated woolen mills in New England. Those factories no longer exist, across America like 63,000 factories that have shuttered since the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was passed three decades ago.

As a result, millions of American families of every color have been locked in a downward spiral of economic mobility for too long driven by the greed of multinational corporations and facilitated over decades by government policies like NAFTA.

In part because of the pandemic and in part because of narrow cushion that’s left before our climate is beyond repair, we’re at a moment when we can turn that around. Over the last three years, we committed as a nation to an unprecedented private and public investment in clean energy and infrastructure in ways that promises to reverse this dreamkilling trajectory.

We’re in a moment when we can finally shift from an economy defined by consumption back to

Padilla, Feinstein Announce Over $1.8 Billion in Broadband Investments to Connect Californians

Government/Business/Financial

WASHINGTON, D.C. —

Today, U.S. Senators Alex Padilla and Dianne Feinstein (both D-Calif.) announced that California was awarded over $1.8 billion in funding for broadband access through the Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) program, a key component of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. This funding will help to deploy affordable, reliable high-speed Internet infrastructure to Californians through President Biden’s “Internet for All” initiative. California will receive just over $1,864,000,000 in BEAD funding.

“This critical funding from the historic Bipartisan Infrastructure Law will be instrumental in bridging the digital divide in communities across California,” said Senator Padilla. “Access to high-speed Internet is essential infrastructure, but for too long, low-income and underserved communities have been shut out of educational and economic opportunities due to a lack of affordable and reliable access to Internet. These transformative investments will help address this equity gap and ensure that all Californians – regardless of zip code – can remain connected.”

“California is home to Silicon Valley and many of the largest tech companies in world. Unfortunately, despite leading in technology innovation, approximately one in five Californians lacks access to reliable and affordable highspeed internet,” said Senator Feinstein. “With this additional funding, California will have received nearly $7 billion from President Biden’s Internet for All initiative, ensuring more Californians are able to affordably access the internet to compete in today’s economy.”

That includes 44 percent of Republicans. Given every congressional Republican voted against the clean energy package last year, that large plurality is significant. It's also a sign that many GOP leaders in Washington are increasingly out of step with their own constituents and districts.

When the group Climate

Power looked at the nearly 200 clean energy projects launched since Congress and the President approved the federal spending package last summer, nearly six in 10 of them are in districts represented by Republicans who voted against the package. Those projects mean at least 77,000 new jobs for electricians, mechanics, technicians, support staff, and others.

Not since the days of FDR have we seen this kind of national investment. Back then, building American industry was vital to winning a war against genocide across Europe. Today, our investment to turn our economy away from destruction and toward good jobs in a cleaner economy that sustains our planet is a fight to protect all of humanity.

Ben Jealous is executive director of the Sierra Club, the oldest and most influential grassroots environmental organization in the country. He is a professor of practice at the University of Pennsylvania and author of “Never Forget Our People Were Always Free,” published in January.

The Black Press is Our Vanguard

By Michael A. Grant, J.D.

This partial recounting of the great work of the NNPA is not meant to be exhaustive. It is, however, a reminder that the medium is the message and no other media will tell our story with the same passion and desire for Black progress that NNPA members have demonstrated.

Thank you, NNPA, and welcome to the home of

Tennessee State University, Meharry Medical College and Fisk University. I hope you enjoy Southern hospitality at its very best! Michael A. Grant, J.D. is president of United Security Financial, Inc., a full-fledge, Black-owned mortgage company. He is also former president of the National Bankers Association.

Family Suing for $100 Million for Death of Keenan Anderson After LAPD Encounter

Maxim Elramsisy | California Black Media

Funded by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program, is a federal grant program that aims to get all Americans online by funding partnerships between states or territories, communities, and stakeholders to build infrastructure where we need it and increase adoption of high-speed Internet. BEAD prioritizes unserved locations that have no Internet access or that only have access under 25/3 Mbps and underserved locations only have access under 100/20 Mbps. The funding comes from the Department of Commerce’s $42.45 billion fund to expand high-speed Internet access by funding planning, infrastructure deployment and adoption programs nationwide. California has received a total of more than $6.9 billion in federal funding to bolster Internet connectivity during the Biden-Harris Administration. In addition to helping connect everyone in America to high-speed Internet, this new funding will support good paying jobs deploying fiber and by using materials Made in America.

Padilla and Feinstein are committed to ensuring all Americans have access to highspeed Internet. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which Padilla and Feinstein supported, invests $65 billion to provide affordable, high-speed Internet to every American. The $7.17 billion Emergency Connectivity Fund program—which was included in the American Rescue Plan that Senator Padilla and Senator Feinstein also voted to pass— helped provide relief to millions of students, school staff, and library patrons during the COVID-19 pandemic.

I write this brief essay with two goals in mind: First, I want to extend a warm welcome to the National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA) to its annual convention in Nashville, Tennessee. And, secondly, to try to share with your readers the powerful impact that the Black Press continues to have on our struggle for total equality in America.

From Frederick Douglas’

The North Star to Ida B. Wells’

The Memphis Free Press and all subsequent members of the Black press, the plight of African – Americans was chronicled and a beacon of hope was provided through the journalistic efforts and trials of the country’s heroic Black Press. I cannot begin to capture the countless ways that the Black Press acted as the vanguard and the persistent battering ram against forces of oppression in this country. What I would like to do is to act as an eyewitness to the enormous contribution that NNPA member papers made during the last thirty years where I had a bird’s eye view of their reporting.

It was around 1992, while serving as branch president of the NAACP here in Nashville, that I had cause to contact NNPA’s office in Washington, D.C. We, at the branch, were reaping the benefits of an initiative to restore the voting rights of felons who had served their time and were interested in enfranchisement. I contacted the local Elections Commission Office and requested that it move its operations one Saturday to the branch office. The campaign was a huge success so we decided to broadcast our efforts nationally in hopes that others would follow suit.

After reaching out to Hazel Trice Edney and Rosetta MillerPerry, the word was disseminated around the country. The rest is history.

My next encounter with the NNPA centered on a marketing strategy for Athan Gibbs’ TruVote Voting System. Arguably, Athan Gibbs’ ingenious invention of the TruVote validation and verification voting system saved American democracy. I know this is a bold assertion but after experiencing the debacle that was the 2000 Presidential election, I witnessed (as vicepresident of marketing for TruVote), first-hand, how Athan Gibbs’ accounting skills helped the country to move to a voting system where confidence could be restored in the voting process. Although he was not given credit for revolutionizing voting in America, I shudder to think of how the country could have survived the attempted coup in 2020 if our voting systems were as flawed as Athan Gibbs found them to be during of the 2000 Presidential Election. I also noticed, years after Gibbs’ untimely death, that I voted on a system that looked remarkedly like Gibbs’ invention, which was widely covered by NNPA member papers.

Lastly, and again, I had to tap into the journalistic excellence of Hazel Trice Edney to help raise the consciousness of Black Americans about the need for building intergenerational wealth. Three national organizations, with the help of Congresswoman Maxine Waters, kicked off a movement called Black Wealth 2020 in 2015. The founding organizations were the U.S. Black Chambers, Inc., the National Association of Black Owned Broadcasters and the National Bankers Association. The presidents of these groups were Ron Busby Sr., Jim Winston and Michael Grant, respectively. The coalition expanded to several other organizations.

Black Wealth 2020 set three ambitious goals: To significantly increase the number of Blackowned businesses and their gross receipts; to increase home ownership by two million; and to increase deposits in and loans with Black banks. At its Winter meeting, the goals of Black Wealth 2020 were ratified by the National Black Caucus of State Legislators a year after the coalition was formed. NNPA newspapers thoroughly covered the movement and led millions of Black Americans to a realization of their buying strength and the power generated by a unity of

Civil Rights and personal Injury attorneys Benjamin Crump and Carl Douglas announced a $100 million lawsuit against the City of Los Angeles last week for the death of Keenan Anderson, a high school English teacher visiting Los Angeles from Washington D.C.

The attorneys are representing Anderson’s son, Syncere Anderson, and Syncere’s mother Gabrielle Hansell.

The complaint alleges civil rights violations, assault and battery, false imprisonment, and negligence on the part of Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) officers in the death of Anderson.

“They are trying to George Floyd me,” Anderson said as he lay face down on the street in Venice, California on January 3. The 30-year-old died later at a hospital after body-camera footage shows him being tased at least six times by LAPD officers.

“[He is] calling out to the public when he's on the ground being tased and squashed. He’s calling for help. He was anticipating his own injury,” Douglas, said to California Black Media (CBM).

“When you think about Black people, our fear is that every time police stop us, they might do us like George Floyd,” Crump said to CBM.

The LA County Medical Examiner-Coroner reported in early June that Anderson’s cause of death was an enlarged heart and cocaine use and reported manner of death as undetermined.

The attorneys argue the report is irrelevant.

“After they assassinated him, they tried to assassinate his character. That is the strategy, tried and true, in America when the police kill Black people,” Crump said. “Look at that video, your eyes are not deceiving you. What killed [Anderson] was an overdose of lethal force, it’s that simple. If he were not tased, he would be here today.”

They believe the video shows that the use of force by police was inappropriate in this situation.

“It matters not whether there was cocaine in his system, because the actions of the officers were wrong. It matters not why he was in distress, because it's clear from the body camera footage that he was never a threat. He spoke to the officers politely. He was always compliant; he never balled his fist, he never kicked. He never did anything to give an officer the belief that he was a threat.

Instead, these officers acted like hammers. And when you send a hammer into a garden, they treat all the flowers like their nails,” Douglas said to CBM.

“They did not know that Keenan Anderson was a schoolteacher of high school students. They didn't know he had a five-year-old boy who loved him and he was engaged in his young son's life. They didn't know he was a role model to dozens of other kids across the country.”

“It resonated with me because I was so close to George Floyds family,” said Crump, who represented the family in a lawsuit against the city of Minneapolis.

“The one thing that I think is similar is just the fact that Black people who have mental health crises, man, we get the death sentence,” Crump said. “When White people have mental health crises, everybody is trying to help them.”

This month the U.S. Department of Justice released a report outlining systemic problems in the Minneapolis Police Department. It said police officers used “unjustified deadly force” and other types of force, and that they “unlawfully discriminate” against Black and Native American people, violate the rights of people engaged in protected speech, and discriminate against people with behavioral health issues.

There were similar findings in Los Angeles Police Department after the Rampart Scandal uncovered corruption.

“20 years ago, there was a finding that there were systemic problems in the Los Angeles Police Department and there was a consent decree,” Douglas said. “The problem is there is a warrior mentality that envelops law enforcement: us versus them; military equipment against citizens instead of a guardian mentality to protect and serve, to help.”

L.A. Mayor Karen Bass discussed the incident with CBM in February.

“People have died at the hands of the LAPD. You had those three deaths in one week, which was